About that Dropbox DMCA thing ...

Dropbox (or any other service) complying with DMCA takedowns isn't really a new thing

There's a bit of a to-do this weekend over Dropbox and the DMCA and whether your files are being scanned, even though they're your files. Twitter user Darrell Whitelaw's post is getting shared all over the place, noting that sharing was disabled under some DMCA rules. The folder was private, contained copyrighted material, and a share link to the folder was shared, albeit not publicly.

We can easily look back to 2012, when our pals at WPCentral were passing around an Xbox 720 document that had leaked out after Microsoft had killed it at the original source, Scribd. Only, they found they couldn't pass it around via Dropbox, because Microsoft got to it there as well.

This has gained traction this week because Dropbox's most recent ToS went into effect March 24.

We tend to take sharing services for granted — especially when they're as easy to use as Dropbox is. But the moment you attach a folder or file to Dropbox, that folder or file is subject to Dropbox's terms of service. (We're picking on Dropbox here, but this rings true for any service that's not your own.) It all comes down to the terms of service, of course. In the case of Dropbox, they're pretty easy to find and are written in plain English. A few examples:

You're responsible for your conduct, Your Stuff and you must comply with our Acceptable Use Policy. Content in the Services may be protected by others' intellectual property rights. Please don't copy, upload, download or share content unless you have the right to do so.

We may review your conduct and content for compliance with these Terms and our Acceptable Use Policy. With that said, we have no obligation to do so. We aren't responsible for the content people post and share via the Services.

Pretty straightforward. Your stuff is your stuff, but Dropbox can "review" your stuff, which makes sense because even though it's still your stuff, and while it doesn't want anything to do with your stuff, really, it's facilitating you being able to sync your stuff over multiple computers, and share it with others. So it does have some skin in the game. That said, Dropbox says it has "no obligation to do so" and that "we aren't responsible for the content people post and share." That's a bit of a hedge, but one of those lawyerly ones that basically says "We don't have to do this, but we're going to because it's better than getting in a big battle with the copyright holders over it."

It's also worth visiting Dropbox's Copyright page, which spells out what we all too often forget:

You do not have the right to share files unless you own the copyright in them or have been given permission by the copyright owner to share them. Purchasing or legally acquiring video, music, ebooks, or software does not give you the right to share that material with third parties over the Internet.

The short version? Owning a copy of something isn't the same as owning the right to share it. There are times that this makes sense. And there are times that this is ridiculous and stupid and completely frustrating. It doesn't matter if you actually pay Dropbox (or any other service) for space — you're still subject to its rules.

The good news is that in Dropbox's case, they're not deleting what's in your folder. They're just limiting your ability to share it. (Although Dropbox does say it could delete information if it wanted to.) Our recommendation? If you've got something you need to share but don't want someone else to know you're sharing it, use something you control. BitTorrent Sync is one popular option. Rolling your own is another. And then there's the good ol' sneakernet.

They could indeed hand them over, but they would still be encrypted and Spideroak would [theoretically] not have the keys to decrypt them. So they wouldn't know what they were handing over. But if a court order granted an agency to get copies of all your stuff, they would have to comply. The agency could then seek to compel the file owner to provide the key, or they could start attacking the encryption to try and break it.

Bottom line, I ask people "How would you like if the content, program, software,music you created was downloaded without charge"? When people can answer this honestly, piracy (and let's bee real that is what this is) will be slowed down.

I was in music production, and when I was asked this question I honestly said, "I'd love for that to happen." To me, it's more exposure, and the little money o would lose out on is worth it to me.

From being in the industry, I know that very little is made from album sales, rather, the money is in the artist touring, and in the licensing of music to different labels, commercial venues, movies, advertisements, etc. I would rather have more people sharing my music and growing a fan base than worried about hunting down users and prohibiting the growth of my fan base. (If I had one of course)

Isn't there a system in place that tracks, collects and pays royalties?

I get that the money in touring/performing and for this to happen, you need corporate sponsors (right)?

The folks with the publishing/writing and producing credit are the ones raking in the dough....

If you work is downloaded 500,000 times, you get exposure, but under your example, who gets paid? Unless you are saying that you come out with something, it goes viral, and say "I" use it for some money making venture, then "I" would pay royalties.

The way I see it, and again I speak solely for myself, I wouldn't have 500,000 downloads in iTunes if it weren't the tens of thousands who shared my music and spreading word for me. The half a million downloads it's a byproduct of people sharing music.

Can't tell you how many times people actually bought the music after they heard a digital copy they got from a friend who said it was really good and they should listen to it. And that's also what causes many people to actually go spend money at a concert to hear that artist perform.

Sorry but no. The only time data can be decrypted when modern cryptography has been used is when the keys have been compromised or the algorithms used to generate the keys our do the encryption have been compromised (and The NSA do both).

If there is stuff being shared without permission (illegally) through dropbox's app or website or whatever, they can be looked at as a middle man. And by them handing over or taking down any illegally shared content is them covering their asses. They don't want to be the middle man of anything and get tangled in a stupid lawsuit.

Ill admit I store clean non cracked Window iso's along with a crap load of virtual machines in google drive (my hard drive) my friends are aware that I have access to these files if if anyone wants one I download it and then give them it to them on a flashdrive or cd. to prevent google from thinking I'm sharing these files.....If you have to share these type of files be smart about it and avoid handing out links that will only set off alarm bells

Bitorrent sync is great if you know the sources in advance. If not, uploading to one source at a time is just too much.
If you want to take it to the cloud, distributed solutions like www.noobaa.com don't rely on datacenters to provide cloud.

Intellectual property and copyright is the main reason technology and medicine is decades behind where it could be. IP creates a few SUPER wealthy. Take that away and let a true free market decide how much people make.

Without any IP rights, very little would be developed. Even FOSS (like Linux, LibreOffice, etc) depends on copyrights to enforce freedom. Many might agree that copyrights and patents are TOO LONG, or the enforcement has been handled incorrectly, or that certain things that are being patented should not be allowed (like software), or the interpretation has been bogus.... but their existence it important for not only innovation, but also the economy. In your example about medicines- if a company could not reap profits by protecting their IP, they would have absolutely zero incentive to spend millions of dollars to try and develop new drugs.

Good idea. Take it away. That way Johnny Startup can come up with a revolutionary idea, have no protection for it and watch helplessly while Apple and Samsung steal his idea and throw millions behind their marketing of it.
Yeah, that'll work real well.

That goes both ways though, the startup could implement all the good ideas that Applesung have come up with, expand on them, and not be worried about being buried in a lawsuit because some megacorp fears real competition.

The key, though, is they have money. So they don't NEED to innovate. Look at Microsoft. They don't ever really innovate. When they can't bully the market, they just buy what they want. If there were no IP protections, MS and the like could just "steal" anything they like. Same with drugs- if there were no medication IP protections, big pharma would immediately take or reverse engineer anything that came up within months and bam, game over for everyone else.

IP protections doesn't just protect big companies, it protects small ones and individuals too. The problem is not that IP protections exist, it is that the terms are unfair and too long.

I was in music production. And when someone posed the question to me, I honestly said, "I'd love for that to happen."

I know the real money isn't in album sales, it's in touring and licensing music to other labels, movies, advertisements, commercial venues, etc.

I'd rather people share my music and grow my fan base than to prohibit the growth. Of course I speak for myself, but it's worth it to me to lose out on the album people are sharing in order to grow listeners.

You might rather have someone share YOUR stuff. And as a copyright holder, YOU should have that right to decide, not others. And the music industry is not the same as books, movies, software, drugs, etc. Some have other outlets for revenue, others do not. Plus, this "licensing music to other labels, movies, advertisements, commercial venues, etc." all requires copyright and copyright protection... or should they just copy it and use it however they like?

I'd You read my post, I clearly state the difference between a major business and a fan using the music that is copyrighted.

In fact, it still happens. The record label usually just goes to the venue or business after they've played the track and basically say stop playing it or pay up. That is of course if it's worth it to...

Ye but its usually big company's that all they care about is money money money! And there only bothered about copywrite because they are loosing a few millions but a few millions on too of Microsoft's billions pffft pure greed

What's annoying is that they seem to be using the same piss-poor matching techniques that Youtube uses. Put together a presentation with a 7 second clip from an ad as an example of a catchy jingle to share with a client. Guess what. I'm taking my files out and switching over to BTSync as the backend and OwnCloud as the frontend.

I used spider oak a few years ago and it was OK, but their UI was horrible and they expected me to manually manage my file versioning which was eating up all my space. I'm not manually deleting old versions of thousands of files. No thanks.

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